Frostpunk 2 Director Łukasz Juszczyk Discusses Game Balance, Politics, and Beta Feedback

After previously having tried out the Closed Beta of Frostpunk 2 and having a chance to experience the Tutorial and Chapter 1 at the 11Bit Hands-On event in Poland, I also had a chance to sit down with Łukasz Juszczyk, Co-Game Director and Art Director, for Frostpunk 2.

Before playing Frostpunk 2, Juszczyk had spoken to all of the attendees about how much more replayable Frostpunk 2 is. Trying to learn more about that, Juszczyk explained that there are two ways that they were aiming to make Frostpunk 2 more replayable.

How Frostpunk 2 Promotes Replayability

"Basically, we are creating a campaign divided into chapters. You will be able to reshuffle decisions from the previous chapters wiping out the future chapters," Juszczyk said. He described different scenarios where you could make different laws, or have sided with different factions at pivotal moments and then resume the game from there.

For a player interested in learning every facet of the game, they don't always need to restart from scratch this way.

The second way that Juszczyk and the rest of the team are working to implement replayability is that unlike in the original Frostpunk, the idea of a sandbox mode is one they're working to design from the very beginning.

Knowing how much had changed between the scale of Frostpunk and what I'd experienced from Frostpunk 2, I wanted to know if there was any particular feedback from fans of the game that they had taken into consideration.

"I can't point out one in particular," Juszczyk started with a laugh. He referenced the Sandbox mode once more here, something that fans were very interested in in the first game became an easy choice to add to the second.

Juszczyk explained that before even working on the story, they used the Sandbox mode as their building blocks. "We started to develop Frostpunk 2 from different angles. First we created the builder and our building pieces keeping in mind that there will be a story built on top of it.

"Only once we were safe with the building blocks, we started to develop a scenario."

I remarked that it's pretty good when your feedback from the original game is just that people want to play a lot more of it. Juszczyk smiled and said, "Yeah, that's awesome but also a lot of pressure."

Frostpunk 2 Beta Feedback

In terms of refining Frostpunk 2 further Juszczyk explained that the recently held closed beta was a source of a lot of information.

"Players were really generous," he said. "I was reading the whole night and day after, there were a lot of comments and a lot of awesome stuff. We also got plenty of feedback from Chinese players, one of us was sitting with Google Translate working to figure out what they want.

"We're happy with the current state of the beta, and we know what to improve."

Balancing Difficulty in Frostpunk 2

Trying to find that space where fans are still being challenged but without the game being impossible, we discussed what it took to balance a game like Frostpunk 2.

"You can't cheat on the player, okay? If the player fails then the player needs to know why he failed, or at least have some idea why," Juszczyk said. "Then the player can learn from his mistakes. As long as on a second playthrough players can proceed that's good balance."

The idea of needing a first playthrough to fail, which allows you to understand the second playthrough and succeed, is exactly the experience that I came away from when I had my time hands-on with Frostpunk 2.

"If the player is struggling on their sixth time though, after that we switch the difficulty because it's probably too hard. We're doing these changes constantly, we're asking the players, 'How hard was it? What was your experience? Was it too hard or too easy?' And we're adjusting based on that feedback," Juszczyk said.

Politics in Frostpunk 2

A new major gameplay element are council meetings, where you collaborate with other factions in the city to pursue laws in your favor. With that and the scaling up of the world, it seemed like the shift had moved slightly away from just the cold, but onto humanity.

"It wasn't a guarantee that we would make Frostpunk 2," Juszczyk said. "We asked ourselves, 'Do we have something to say? Do we have something interesting or worthwhile to say?' We didn't want to attempt it and waste the player's time if we didn't."

When brainstorming ideas, Juszczyk explained, "We realized what would be interesting in that kind of world is how society would work in a clearly post-apocalyptic world. How will the people start to dream? What will be their ambitions?

"Frostpunk was an apocalyptic world, and by the end of it, it's truly post-apocalyptic."

Trying to conceptualize a finally stable community is what led to a lot of the dreams and ambitions behind the different factions, but the team also immediately knew that these differences in dreams would also contribute to tension.

"The political aspect is just a tool to show the clashing ideas, the clashing of different divisions," he said. "Frostpunk 2 itself is about consequences."

Frostpunk 2's Twitch Integration

Those at the event in Warsaw to preview the game had also learned about Frostpunk 2's Twitch Intergration. With this, streamers will be able to give their Twitch chat a voice in council meetings; whether that be that they have a portion of the council to control or total control is up to the streamer.

"I'm super hyped to see how the chat will interact with each other and how the streamer's journey is about how you handled those chaotic people," Juszczyk laughed. "Different views create democracy, but if you've got crazy people in chat, maybe you should go for a tyranny approach, so that would be interesting."

The Eerily Beautiful World of Frostpunk 2

Before our conversation was over I asked Juszczyk whether there was an aspect of the game he was excited about that he doesn't normally get a chance to talk about. He explained that what he enjoyed the most was the look of the world and how the pieces all worked together.

"I really enjoy how our city is responsive to the terrain. Just like visual porn, I like how it sticks around. Even though it's a terrifying world, it's a very beautiful world.

"The world is not depressing or dark, right? The people inside are."